Channel Zero: No-End House - S2E1 - This Isn’t Real

Previously on Channel Zero

Syfy’s horror anthology series — each season based on a different Creepypasta Internet tale — is back with a six-episode season featuring a thriller staple: the house of horrors.

Still mourning the loss of her father (John Carroll Lynch) a year earlier, Margot Sleater (Amy Forsyth) reluctantly joins her home-from-college friend Jules (Aisha Dee) for a night out. They hook up with childhood friend JT (Seamus Patterson) and new guy Seth (Jeff Ward). JT heard that a mysterious traveling haunted house is in town and hopes to check it out. Its arrival is announced via cryptic social media posts before a commercial reveals the exact address. It’s a house with six rooms, each more terrifying than the last. Those who enter a few of the rooms are never the same; those who visit every room are never heard from again. Of course, when the commercial flashes on Margot’s TV, the group decides to go for it. 

The long walk to the end of the dark cul-de-sac really sets up why you’d believe anyone would enter such a place — well, besides the fact that teenagers can be stupid. For one, people like to be scared. Mainly, though, they don’t really believe anything they’re about to encounter is real and they’re driven more by the desire to be the one smart enough to point out the smoke and mirrors than anything else. Before they enter, and as people who exit the house stumble to their cars, JT floats the rumor that the air outside the house is misted with an hallucinogen. This gives them an excuse for anything unbelievable they might encounter.

But as they travel further into the house, getting split up (naturally), and as more people nope the fuck out, it’s impossible to find a rational explanation for the deeply personal hell Margot experiences: A recurring nightmare she told Seth about earlier comes to life inside the house’s hallway. Personal home videos featuring her father play on the TVs. Margot’s fifth room is a replica of her own living room and the night she found her father dead, sitting in front of the TV, having suffered a deadly allergic reaction to prescription meds. A bloated version of her father hugs her and won’t let go until she screams she wants to go home. He/it reminds her she has only one room left before she can go, but the first door she tries leads her to the backyard and Jules.

Unsure of how long they’ve been inside, unable to find JT and Seth, and unable to start Margot’s car, the two walk back to Margot’s house. Jules stops at her car to get a change of clothes while Margot enters. Inside, she finds her father, humming a song, grating cheese, and alive and well. As Jules prepares to enter the house she notices a 6 next to the door.

As terrifying as the events inside the No-End House were (and they were pretty fucking scary), nothing beats the cold open: A girl named Lacey (Jess Salgueiro) nervously walks down a quiet street, heading for the No-End House at the center of a cul-de-sac. The only other people around are a woman walking her dog, and she doesn’t acknowledge Lacey, and a man who begins to chase her down the road in broad daylight. Before she can reach the house, he tackles her and begins to burn off the words Lacey has etched into her arm: This isn’t real.

… when, not two minutes after entering the house, the first room had porcelain busts of everyone who just entered the house. J.T. talking about, “They probably scanned our faces as we were walking in and used a 3D printer.” Boy, bye.

… when home videos of my dead dad started playing. Not cool, house. Not cool.

… when this creepy bastard showed up:

… when J.T. was like, “Let’s go to this haunted house I know about from the internet.”